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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Springtime Tips and Heirloom Seeds

One of the best antidotes that I have found for a cold and gloomy winter's day is planning for a summer garden. Very few things can lift my mood on an overcast day as well as reading the descriptions of fruit and vegetable seeds that are found in seed company catalogs.

Within the pages of Baker Creek’s Pure Seeds catalog, I first read about tomatoes varieties such as Cherokee Purple, Paul Robeson, Pink Vernissage, Yellow Mortgage Lifter, and Green Zebra. Most seed companies now carry these heirloom varieties, but Baker Creek's catalog always features such lavish photographs and well-written descriptions (often with intricate histories for many of the heirloom varieties) that I return to it again and again when planning my garden.

In the spirit of shaking off some winter's gloom, the Springville Road Regional Library will present ‘Springtime Tips and Heirloom Seeds’ on Tuesday, January 29th at 6:30pm as part of our ongoing series of gardening programs.

For this program, Master Gardener Mike Rushing will deliver his “gearing up for spring” presentation entitled Mike’s Springtime Tips. Dr. Rushing will focus on what gardeners should be planning and preparing during the colder months of the year in order to have their garden plot ready for planting come spring.

We will also have Jere Gettle – the founder of Baker Creek Seed Co. and a man once described by the New York Times as "the Indiana Jones of seeds" – appearing live via Skype to tell us about why growing heirloom fruits and vegetables is vital to our own health as well as the health of our communities. Mr. Getttle will also tell us about some of his adventures while travelling around the world to find heirloom seeds for his thriving business.